NAB 2005:脚现在不会让我失望

The NAB show floor is not for the faint of heart: with 更多的 than 105,000 registered attendees and almost 2 million square feet of exhibit space at NAB 2005 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, attempting to take in the entire show in three days is a nearly impossible feat.

In order to provide a high-level overview of the entire show, we did cover the entire floor. 结果是, three words summarize streaming's presence at NAB (beyond "must rest feet"): larger, 小, 更多的.

"Larger" due to the increase in the number of streaming service providers exhibiting at the show or meeting with customers. 从East Bay Media和eonStreams到Globix, 婚庆, 及以后, streaming media service providers showcased their ability to successfully deliver customer content to an audience of discerning broadcast representatives.

But the streaming service providers weren’t the only ones who boosted their profile this year:
• Macromedia also had a larger presence than in years previous, touting its upgraded Flash Video format in partnership with On2 Technologies.
•雅高(accord)扩大了在展会上的影响力, showcasing its software products and partnerships with streaming service providers.
• thePlatform presented a compelling argument for its network- and codec-independent management and publishing software to small independent content owners as well as major broadcasters.

贴上了“更小”的标签, because streaming media hardware providers demonstrated prototypes and shipping versions of encoding solutions that packed 更多的 processing power into 小 packages:
•媒体Excel演示了H的原型.264 PVR board that can be used either in an IP-based set-top box or as a small PCI card in a standard computer.
•远见解决方案公司. followed up their successful launch of the AVN200 MPEG-2 encoder with the AVN210 broadcast version, complete with balanced audio and other features broadcasters had requested.
• Viewcast showed off a prototype 2-up rack unit encoding solution that featured two encoding boards, confidence audio and video monitoring built right into the front panel; Viewcast used the show to elicit additional feedback from its target market, and comments overheard at the booth were complimentary about the potential for the unit to fulfill "mission critical" needs.

但是等等，还有“更多”.“围绕VC1和H的嗡嗡声.264 continues to grow as viable delivery alternatives to MPEG-2. While NAB is not set to replace Supercomm anytime soon, the signs of the beginning of a groundswell toward IPTV were apparent. 虽然还需要几年时间才能超越卫星, terrestial电波, and cable MSOs as the delivery methods of choice for NAB's core attendees, IPTV以各种方式展现了它的存在:
•苹果展示了其基于网络的分布式H.264 High Definition rendering, as part of DVD Studio Pro 4
•Ateme和Altera展示了一个实时H的原型.264编码板
•阿特米和尼禄展示了H.264 encoding and Recode in Nero's DVD software suite• Harmonic showed a real-time VC1 encoder board, DiviCom MV1000, with output that can be carried within an MPEG-2 transport stream
• Inlet's Fathom boardset and accompanying Seen by Scene segment encoding software demonstrated real-time VC1 high-definition output. Seen by Scene provided an efficient and easy-to-use visual representation of difficult or problem segments that could be re-encoded without the need to re-encode the entire file, 降低广播公司的播出时间限制
• 媒体Excel demonstrated an MPEG-2 HD to MPEG-4 (H.264)转码器/转码器硬件板
•模数视频展示了其实时广播H.264 encoders both in its own booth and in several partner booths

最后, a wrap-up of NAB would not be complete without a look at a couple key high-def technologies introduced at the show:
• Apple and Avid both showed off HDV versions of their software-only editing systems (Apple Final Cut Pro 5 and Avid Xpress Pro HD, 分别). Apple added multi-camera editing to FCP to solve a shortcoming it had faced against 更多的 expensive Avid units.
• Focus Enhancements showcased the FS-4 Pro HD portable hard drive video recorder, which simultaneously allows capture of HDV to tape and hard disk; while Focus' FS-4 unit's capture to disk is primarily meant to shorten the editing cycle, its format-specific disk capture can also significantly shorten the encode process for high-definition VC1 or H.264输出.

总之, streaming's presence at the show was larger than in previous years, and even though streaming and encoding devices are shrinking in size and bandwidth requirements per stream are dropping, expect to see 更多的 interest in streaming technologies as high-definition content creation and delivery reaches critical mass in late 2005 and early 2006.